tramping
tramping
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DIP
SOME tramps have a groundless fear of water. In Russia they call itvodaboyazn, which means simply “water fright,†and is a better word than hydrophobia, which means the same thing, but is connected in the mind with mad dogs. Here, no mad dog is in question. Water: a liquid recommended for external use, is greatly despised by certain winebibbers who affect to be afraid that it will get into the wine. The fact is, most of them have got the water fright. After a stout bottle of Burgundy and a cigar, what more dreadfultorture can be imagined than sitting under a fountain of water. It is better to sit in an old leather chair in a Piccadilly window than on a chair in the rocks under a flowing cascade. “I am for that Piccadilly window,†says the confirmed lizard—and not a few tramps are at one with the clubman. However, once you get the water fright it is almost incurable, and perhaps not worth writing about.
Coldness of the water is a prejudice. The coldest dip in the sea is easier to take than the ordinary cold bath in a cramped bathroom. The immediate activity of the body conquers the cold. In a bathroom most people have to be painfully passive. But truly, in those seasons of the year when one is able to sleep out of doors one need not fear the temperature of the water.
The morning swim is such an embellishment of the open-air life that many are tempted to plan their whole expedition with that in view. Thus they would rather tramp along the sea-shore or in a region of many lakes than traverse a region of little rivers and springs, but no water of depth. The dip means a greatdeal extra in happiness, health and vigor. I think I prefer the lake to the sea—that is, after a night out of doors. It is colder and fresher. Its unruffled gray and silver seems to have been spread specially for you to plunge into.
It is a different matter to come from an hotel bed out to the margin of the mere and wade into early morning loveliness. That is good, but it is not the best. You miss the continuity of experience. A night with the moon and wild flowers, with fleeting clouds and seeming-fleeting stars, with cool and warm airs wandering, with wood whispers and the nightingale’s song, has its fittingenvoiin twenty minutes’ plashing after dawn. Nature learns that the tramp is awake.
You scoop a coffeepot full of water from the same pool wherein you bathe. You see the coffeepot standing on the bank like a faithful bird awaiting your return from the water. Mother-naked, you plunge and strive and indulge in various forms of joyous excess. The gray dawn sky above is gentle as loving eyes. The blue smoke of your fire has lost itself andplays with the morning air as you do with the water.
After that, still dripping, you carry the coffeepot to the fire. You dry as you walk. It may be your pleasure as a man to return to the lakeside and shave. You stand in the freshness with no one near and brandish a lathered shaving brush; you may not get all the hair off, but what more delicious shave than this!
The next item in the program may be the morning wash. You can wash out a shirt, a pair of socks, a towel, the sugar bag, what you will, and dry them as the morning sun warms up. This is a necessary matter now and then. It is not convenient to save up bits of washing for some village lass to do, or for some town laundry; it means delay in uncongenial places.
The dip is also associated in the mind with fishing. Dawn is the hour when they jump, and the angler-tramp loves the dawn shadows of the morning twilight. He catches his breakfast before he bathes, guts his fish, gets ready his frying pan—for you do not want towait too long for food once you have been in the water.
But it is not only at dawn that one bathes. Any good stream or pool at any time is a good pretext for a dip. There is some danger of overdoing it at the beginning, especially when it is sea bathing. The afternoon bathe is sometimes tiring, if one has bathed also before noon. A good plan is to bathe morning, noon and night, but not too long at any time. If you are a thoroughgoing lazy tramp you can sun bathe for an hour or so also, but of course you will not get far along the coast in the course of a day. In lake and sea there is the temptation of swimming, but most commonly, in mountain tramping, swimming is not possible. The rivers are too tumultuous, the lakes are boggy or shallow. But there is considerable pleasure. No happier noontide can be imagined than on the stairs of a cascade where a little river, plunging from a pass, makes its rocky and foaming descent to gentler levels. You sit well inside a water-worn slippery armchair, while living crystal comes down on your head and neck, on shoulders and back. In theRockies and in the Alps, in the Caucasus, and in the Carpathians—wherever there are mountains, there are such places and such delights.
When you reach the snow line there is pleasure enough in snow bathing, though one should beware of it when the body has got very hot with arduous climbing. The snow often has a comparatively solid crust, but when this is broken it is soft underneath. It depends on your constitution whether you can stand it at a high altitude, but otherwise it is pleasant sometimes in mid-July to plaster oneself with the so-unfamiliar snow.
The evening swim, too, is a pleasure, taking the tiredness out of your limbs and adding to the happiness of your relaxation when, later, you lie with your blanket over you under the stars. It has not the joy of the dawn swim, not thejoie de vivreof that of noontide. But it has the peace of an evening hymn or child’s prayer. If you are a Celt or a Slav, it has melancholy, the poetry of sadness. It tunes the soul to the night mood and the awakening of the dim stars and the coming on of that intense silence, that stopped breath of Nature,which one senses in the first hours of the night.
From baptism comes grace. The spirit of the water has found place in the bosom of the wanderer. He may be a pagan at heart, but he has come nearer to being a Christian if he has thus bathed three times a day.